In the Eyes of the Daughter
by icings
Summary: Emma Swan is not used to being anyone's daughter, let alone the daughter of an epic fairy tale love. And figuring out who she is now, means learning who they are together. Written for #SnowingWeekend, a Snowing one-shot from the perspective of the daughter.


****_**Author's Note: This is just a short one-shot I wrote for Once Upon a Fan's #SnowingWeekend. I figured I'd post it here too, so that more of my lovely, loyal, and oh so patient readers know about it. **  
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* * *

**In the Eyes of the Daughter by Icings**

She'd worried, if she was going to be honest, when she found out the truth. Not about the essentially nonexistent age difference between herself and her _parents_, as weird as it happened to be. Not about the magic, though its belonging to people whose moral compass she could not be sure of was more than a little bit disconcerting.

No, what she had really found herself worrying about was her father. Or, to be more accurate, the man her mother was in love with.

David Nolan, she had long ago determined, was no Prince Charming. Not a bad guy, she figured, not intentionally cruel, but the jerk had kept screwing over her best friend; kept hurting her to the core, over and over again, and that hadn't gone over well with her, even after finding her best friend and the guy who kept hurting her to be her parents.

She'd thought she'd been subtle, when she started asking Mary - Snow - Mom? - about her father and the relationship they had while they wandered through the Enchanted Forest together, but her mother had seen right through her.

"You only know him as the man he was while cursed, Em," she'd told her. "That's not who he is. David hurt Mary Margaret, unintentionally, but he did. But Charming... he'd die before he'd ever hurt me. You don't have to worry about that. He knows who he is now, and he'd never hurt me - or you."

She'd started to argue, figuring that the curse couldn't change personalities that much, but then they got interrupted by a couple stampeding ogres, and the woman she once knew as her meek best friend took them both out with one well-placed arrow each, before anyone else could so much as panic.

Mary Margaret may have been meek. But it turned out Snow White was a badass.

So maybe her mother had a point with this whole curse, then.

* * *

She finds she can't keep her eyes off of them, once they're home to make that possible.

They gravitated to each other; around each other, like planets, or a planet with its own solitary moon in orbit. One moved slightly, the other adjusted their position, like neither could bare to be that fraction of an inch further away from the other.

She would touch him, all the time, subtle little gestures like a hand to his chest, or her head on his shoulder; little things that reminded her that she was safe and home, home because he was there.

He seemed content just to have her close, didn't seem to need the reassuring gestures quite as much as she did. But there had been a moment, when he had stepped outside to grab the newspaper, and she had chosen that exact moment to head to the washroom.

She was pretty sure she would never forget the way her father's eyes had widened in sheer panic when he'd come back into the apartment and his wife wasn't in his immediate vision.

"She's just in the washroom," she'd told him, quiet, and still somewhat shy.

His eyes had immediately calmed. "Thanks. It's silly..."

"No," she muttered, looking down. "You've been through too much. Every second you can't _see_ for yourself that the one you love is just fine is scary."

He'd smiled at her. "Henry?"

She'd looked up at him, wide-eyed.

"There's different kinds of love, Emma, and I know several of them well. That bone deep need for the one you love to be safe seems consistent with all of them. I get every bit as nervous when you're out of my sight as I do when Snow is."

She'd bitten her lip, nervous, then forced the words out. "I don't... I don't even want to guess at what it must have cost you to get me into that wardrobe, saving me from the curse. And, um, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that I am grateful for it. I was unfair about it before, I didn't know, didn't understand..."

"That we did it because we love you," he'd finished, calmly, without doubt - but somehow without any pressure at all in the simple statement.

She'd swallowed. "I promise, someday I'll get to a place where I don't look completely terrified every time you say something like that to me."

He'd reached out, touched her hand, and she hadn't even been tempted to pull away, so maybe she was closer to that day than she'd thought.

"I know," he'd told her, and the certainty in his voice warmed her to the core.

She'd bonded with her father in a way that she hadn't before, and even as Snow had come back into the room, a surprised smile on her face, she hadn't wanted the moment to end.

* * *

It finally dawned on her that, as weird as things definitely were for her, it must be infinitely weirder for just about everyone else in town. At least, at very least, she wasn't trying to get through her day with full memories of two completely different lives, two completely different versions of her self conflicting in her head.

Her parents seemed to deal with it better than most, each having the other to ground them. When the other was nearby - which indeed was the case the vast majority of the time - there was no question. They were Snow and Charming. They were the one who belonged to the other.

That certainty kept there from being any confusion with the other life in which they could never quite figure that basic truth out.

Others struggled, and that made it hard. Lives intertwined within everyone's head, and it was difficult, even for her, to see the hurt in her mother's eyes and the disappointment in her father's, when they'd go to the diner and Red would come by and take their order with a cheerful, "Morning Mary, David..." before realization would dawn, the switch in her head would flip, and she would trail off in horror, apologizing profusely.

They would be so understanding, so gracious about it, the natural born leaders that they both were. They'd laugh it off, making things better for their friend. They'd all lived these lives for twenty-eight years, Snow would say, it was only natural for everyone to slip up sometimes.

They never slipped up. And despite what they said, it pained them both when others did.

"I just don't know how to make it better for everyone," Snow would always sigh, later at the apartment, curled up sideways on the couch, reclining back against her husband.

He would lean down, place a kiss on the top of her head, finger the ends of the waves her hair was already starting to grow back out into. "I don't think it's your job to make it better, my darling. Everyone will come to who they are now in their own time."

She would always sigh, frustrated, but accepting. "I'm glad I have you to remind me."

His arms around her would tighten. "I'm glad I have you too."

It almost felt too intimate, like she shouldn't be right there watching, but these were her parents, and look how perfectly they fit, and she never could bring herself to look away.

* * *

There were other sides of this whole two lives but having identified with one thing, and some of them were wildly entertaining. Her parents, still having full memory of lives spent as Mary Margaret Blanchard and David Nolan, completely understood, and regularly used the benefits of this world, but there were times, like this one, when they found themselves completely struck by it.

"It's just ingenious," Snow exclaimed, even as her husband and daughter indulged her with toothy grins. "Imagine, a portrait, just done like that, in seconds! Even you can manage to sit still that long, Charming!"

"Hey!" he scowled, mock affronted, while she had dissolved into giggles herself both out of humor at her parents, and out of delighted joy that she actually got to have these ridiculous moments with them now.

"Okay," she jumped up, "I'm now seeing stars and we're going to have approximately six thousand pictures of me with one of the two of you. But apparently we've got some portraits of the two of you to recreate, in just seconds. Hand over the camera."

And so Snow sat down, damn near on her husband's lap for how close the two were, and Charming whispered something to her that had her fall into laughter, and so in the first picture she ever takes of her parents, her mother is laughing hysterically, and her father is looking at her, the kind of indulgent smile on his face that says she's his entire world.

She makes a mental note to get the picture printed and framed for her own room, no matter how many better pictures they may take.

* * *

She stares at that picture all the time, when she's lying awake at night.

She'd found a pretty frame for it, a blue cobblestone texture, and she keeps it on her end table so that it's always near her. She's not even sure her parents know she has it - they've been wonderfully respectful of her privacy and rarely come up to her bedroom - and she's still not quite sure how she feels about that.

On one hand, she wishes she could show them, tell them how much it means to her; on the other, she's positive she couldn't find the words anyway. And she kind of likes it, this secret piece of them that she has, that even they don't know about.

Yes, she stares at that picture, memorizing every detail, every feature of their faces, reveling in them.

His eyes, her smile. Her curls, his hair colour. And her face, oh man, the roundedness of it, the curve of her chin, the porcelain skin.

She's so very much her parents' daughter that she finds herself losing her breath over it.

How could she ever, ever, ever, have doubted Henry's story, she wonders. She should have seen it from the moment she first met them. She was such a perfect combination of them both that it damn near makes her want to weep, and she's not the weepy type, never had been but apparently is now. So suddenly she's grabbing the frame and holding it to her chest, and bolting out of bed and running down the old staircase, and seeing as her parents turned to her in surprise, and she tries very hard to ignore the way her mother's hand is on her father's chest, and her father's hand is clutching her mother's arm, and there's a quickly cooling heat in both of their eyes, and she clearly interrupted something and she wants to feel humiliated except she kind of just feels giddy because apparently she's a crazy person who's wanted her entire life to see her parents wanting each other.

"Em?" Snow asks, worried, and Charming's hand is holding her tighter, concern plain in the eyes that he gave to her.

"I'm your daughter," Emma breathes. "I'm really, really your daughter. You're my parents. You're my Mom and Dad. And you love me. You love me as much as you love each other, and that's a whole hell of a lot"

And Snow is crying, and it looks like Charming is fighting it too, and they're both still standing over there like they don't know what to do, which they probably don't, and they both probably just want to hold her but they're leaving everything so completely up to her, as they have from the beginning, not pushing at all, and she adores them both so much for it, it actually hurts.

"I don't even know how I suddenly got so lucky," Emma continues, "because even though this is so freaking weird for all of us, I've got parents who I look just like, and you're both kind of awesome and badass, and you love me even though I'm so screwed up, and it's all I've ever wanted and I love you both so much for it."

And then she runs into both of their embrace, because hell, if they're not going to do it, she is, and all three of them are crying by now, but they're both holding her, or Snow is, and Charming has arms wrapped around them both, and she's still got one hand clutching that absurdly perfect photo that she's probably going to have to show them now to explain where all this came from, but later, because they've got all the time in the world.

She's the daughter of two people who are hopelessly in love, and they're a real family even though it's weird. And someday, she's quite positive, she'll have siblings, because she's now seen the way they look at each other when they think no one else is around, and hell yeah, siblings are going to be coming, and somehow the idea thrills her when it once would have terrified her. A little sister would be pretty fantastic, she thinks, and maybe a brother too, that she can help her parents with, because if there's one good thing about having a daughter the same age as you, it's that.

She could be an awesome big sister, she thinks.

She managed to figure out the whole daughter thing, after all. And as the daughter, she knew these future, for now imaginary kids were going to be so damn lucky.

Love made good parents, she'd always thought, and her parents shared the most extraordinary love she'd ever seen. And with that knowledge, she suddenly couldn't wait for them to have more children.

She'd have the best bedtime stories in the world to tell them, after all.

* * *

_**Author's Note: I'll be getting back to work on Freedom Love right away, this was just a short break because I really wanted to contribute something new to #SnowingWeekend. **_

_**I'm sorry for the FL delay, there's a couple of reasons for it. 1, the coming chapter is insanely important and I want to take my time to get it right, and 2, my life got unexpectedly crazy the last week and I haven't had as much time as I would like to write. I'm going to try and use my Christmas break from work to get as much as possible of the chapter written - but no promises. **_

_**I am on twitter as icingsfanfic, and I use my twitter account to update where I am with various stories, including Freedom Love, so if you'd like regular updates as to how close I'm getting to posting new chapters / works, there is that there for you to follow. **_

_**Thanks, as always, for reading. **_


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